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EU Court Forces Publishers To Allow Digital Games Resale

The Court of Justice of the European Union has made a landmark ruling that prohibits software publishers from opposing secondhand sales of their programs (and games).

The lengthy and exhaustive ruling covered most – if not all – of the legal tactics employed by software publishers to prevent secondhand sales. Most prominently, the court ruled that firsthand purchasers of software have the right to resell it even if they signed a license agreement that prohibits that. “[This] would allow the copyright holder to control the resale of copies downloaded from the internet and to demand further remuneration on the occasion of each new sale, even though the first sale of the copy had already enabled the rightholder to obtain an appropriate remuneration,” the court explained. “Such a restriction of the resale of copies of computer programs downloaded from the internet would go beyond what is necessary to safeguard the specific subject-matter of the intellectual property concerned.”

The court also made it clear that this ruling applies even in cases was the software developer states in the EULA that the purchaser is only granted a license to use the software. The court ruling explained that a “sale” in the legal sense should be interpreted broadly as “the grant of a right to use a copy of a computer program, for an unlimited period, in return for payment of a fee” and that otherwise, “suppliers would merely have to call the contract a ‘licence’ rather than a ‘sale’ in order to circumvent the rule of exhaustion and divest it of all scope.”

This ruling is now part of the EU law and all EU member states are bound by EU law to interpret or modify their local laws to comply with it.

Games/videos ARE different, it's the same issue we have when the music industry tries to say piracy is theft. These digital goods do not exist physically, furthermore when it comes to software the customer is not allowed to modify things as that would require the source code which belongs to the developers. Digital goods should not be treated as normal physical goods, but they also shouldn't be treated how they have been until now. New laws and categories are required if things are to be done in a way that is fair to both consumers and producers.

Those of us that are not asleep, that is! We have so many people here that are fighting the best that we can. We just have to wake up the rest of the population to the fact that our government is no longer OUR government, but that of the Corporations.

Game companies should just stop selling their products in the EU.
Liberal pot smokers in the EU looking out for the "little guy" you know, that midget who shops at thrift stores, stuffs his pockets with tater tots, and cant afford a new game.

There's nothing much to add... It's pretty much because of people like you that the rest of the world views Americans as a bunch of retards. Thankfully most educated people know that stereotype isn't true and is only a distorted image generated by shows like Jersey Shore and preteen ***** like yourself...

In any case this is just another example why I love to live in Europe...

Does this mean I can sell my Steam account to anybody now? I remember some guy in the past tried to sell his Steam account (he had about 70 games and was looking to sell it for about $500) but Valve caught wind of it and banned him and he lost all his games...

According to this, you'd be able to sell your steam games, not your steam account. The difference is that steam still has to create a system for used game sales instead of you being allowed to ebay your account on your own. That said, its certain that steam will charge for it. Maybe keep a percentage of the sale price and have a minimum value set.

'Till you reach puberty you're still in line to turn out gay so be careful there kid... One day you're calling steam users gay, the next you might start having fantasies with your gym shower buddies...